Experience VRcade, full motion gaming.  Co-creator Jamie Kelly describes the experience as “a virtual-reality arcade platform that allows players to wear a 3-D headset and surround sound headphones while having every inch of your body tracked and placed inside of a video game. The set up requires a truss system with motion capture cameras and several computers. Players will be fully immersed in the virtual world and will be able to shoot targets, monsters, and interact in a wide variety of ways in a number of different scenarios. Players can move, duck, jump, and run just like they would do in real life. Their appearance can be anything, from a fantasy creature to someone resembling their own likeness. Props such as swords and guns are also tracked in real time.”

Another project at Seattle Mini Maker Faire lets you check out history through the lens of stop-motion animation, where you’ll get to “work in teams and use critical thinking and problem solving skills to develop 21^st century skills with new technology and stop-motion animation. This project lets you  learn by bringing the world to life, instead of watching the world through video games and books,” says James Ewing, creator of the “If I Had a Time Machine: eMagination Animation Project.” For all of you interested in time travel, history, or stop-motion animation, this is the project for you!

Finally, if you’re a big concert-goer and love experiencing the different light schemes at shows, then you’d have a blast getting to play around on an actual concert light board, pushing buttons and getting to watch different lasers interact! Come visit Christopher and Alex’s project “Photon Funtimes,” where you just might get inspired getting to see how putting on a light show works!

Photon Funtimes

OlyMega Makerspace

At last year’s inaugural Seattle MakerFaire, OlyMEGA Makerspace brought Desktop Ballistics, a Light Painting Booth, 3D Printing, Handmade “Faerie Doors”, Open Source Games/Game Engine, LeOlympia Arduino Board, and more. We’ve grown since then, with new members and a bigger, more industrial makerspace.
This year, OlyMEGA will again be pulling out all the stops for Seattle Mini Maker Faire. We’re still firming up a few of the projects, but confirmed projects include a “3D Bubble Printer”, Interactive/Touchable Projections, Rattan “Luminary” Animal Art, Electric Bike Conversion, Paper Marbling, and hopefully more as time, space, the laws of physics permit.

Olympia Circuits

Olympia Circuits makes Arduino based boards for learning how to use Arduino and for various applications.  The revolutionary Arno Learning System is a new way to learn Arduino programming.  It cuts out many of the barriers to Arduino and includes a comprehensive book.  Additionally, Olympia Circuits creates specialized boards for environmental data logging, controls, and generally fun projects.

The first step to participating in Seattle Mini Maker Faire is to submit an entry that tells us about yourself and your project. Entries can be submitted from individuals as well as from groups, such as hobbyist clubs and schools. Please provide a short description of what you make and what you would like to bring to Seattle Mini Maker Faire, including links to photographs and/or videos of your project. We particularly encourage exhibits that are interactive and highlight the process of making things.  

Click these links to learn more about how to apply as a Maker  (adults) or a Young Maker (ages 10-17).

Here’s a little interview with me, Christin Boyd, at the faire and showing how we made Seattle Mini Maker Faire 2012.  Filmed and edited by Howard Gutknecht.

Technology with Intent crafted this short video showing artistic glimpses at some of the most visual and kinetic activities at Seattle Mini Maker Faire:

3D Video of Seattle Mini Maker Faire

Make Something

We hope you enjoyed meeting the makers at the faire. You can take a class, rent awesome tools, attend a lecture, or join one of the maker groups who exhibited at Seattle Mini Maker Faire.  You can contact the makers through the their websites, which are listed on our Makers page.

Your kids can join a FIRST team, the Geek Scouts, or the Science Squad. We had two FIRST Robotics teams at Seattle Mini Maker Faire, Oak Harbor Robotics Club (pictured here) and Team XBot.

It’s hard to justify buying a laser cutter, or building your own metal foundry, so why not rent the workshop space and take a class from a pro at All Metal Arts, Metrix Create: Space, or Pratt Fine Arts Center?

Don’t you NEED a pair of metal wings like the ones from All Metal Arts (pictured below)?

Make something.  You’ll be glad you did.

-Christin Boyd, Producer, Seattle Mini Maker Faire

Cascade Science Squad

Cascades Science Center Foundation is a non-profit foundation dedicated to sparking children’s interest in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) through hands-on activities that stimulate creativity, encourage exploration and inspire active learning for children to unlock their full potential.  At the Seattle Mini Maker Faire, the kids will have an opportunity to participate in fun science activities led by the volunteers of the foundation.

Cascade Science Squad - Real Science Real Fun!

Joy Guild’s Creative Reuse Challenge

The Joy Guild is a village of creative-minded people who seek fun, playfulness, and inspiration to live a happy life. Our programs encourage exploration through an artist’s lens and learning-by-adventure. We’re excited to be part of the creative reuse movement, turning found objects, scraps, and seemingly useless materials into something new and functional, instead of adding to an ever-growing landfill. Take our Creative Reuse Challenge to build your own guided art project—from toys to textiles to trimmings.

ShareCraft

Join the Craft Mob at the Sharecraft booth! We’ll be re-purposing old t-shirts to make new, usable tote bags which will be donated to a local charity. Or for a donation, you can take the tote bag home with you!  Bring your favorite old t-shirt, or shirts that your kids have outgrown, and repurpose the fabric, the graphics and the images on the shirt to make a keepsake tote bag!

Solder Station

Learn to solder, or refresh old skills with the soldering iron at the Solder Station!  Multiple vendors will sell kits and projects at Seattle Mini Maker Faire.  Have a seat at the Solder Station and one of the knowledgeable volunteers will help you get started.  Volunteers at the Solder Station come from many local hacker spaces including Jigsaw Renaissance, Emerald City Makers, and more!

Straw Rockets

Make your own rocket out of paper and tape, then launch it into the air with pneumatics!  Yeah, that’s right, pneumatics!

Inspinity Hula Hoops

We are Ashley and Penny, and we are Hula Hoop enthusiasts. We have created Inspinity to share our sport with the world! When kids and adults of all ages see our colorful hoops they are entranced with curiosity and compelled to join in the fun of hula hooping. It is such a fun activity you can do almost anywhere if you have enough room, and whether you can do tricks or just enjoy a core work out, hula hooping can be enjoyed by anyone. Our passion comes from the magic of hula hooping that can turn any inflexible adult back into a child with just one rotation of the hoop, to see them smiling and laughing, even though they may not get the motion of hooping right the first time.

West Seattle Fixers and Makers

The West Seattle Fixers and Makers will  display  wood carvings, paddles, canoe, sculptures from recycled materials and unique appliances that have been repaired by our Fixers’ Collective.

In addition to the displays, we will offer activities for visitors to do during the event; such as making their own mini sewing or tool kit, taking apart broken tools and trying to diagnose why it doesn’t work, and exploring creative uses for PVC fittings and tubing.

Light Symphony by University Child Development School

At the Light Symphony booth, you can program an Arduino to play musical tones with light!  Visitors will be able to send a light signal to a modified fiber optic receiver board that converts the light signal to sound.  By recording that sound to a mobile device or computer you can then attach a small LED box we made (and visitors will get a chance to prototype) to the audio output. The light box will blink and fade to the beat of the melody.  The UCDS Technology Specialist and some of the fourth and fifth grade students who created, built and recorded this project will be present to help guide and demonstrate visitors through their process.

3D printer at UW

Accessibility to 3D printing at the individual-level will lower barriers to innovation and ultimately change the way people live, work, and create. 3D printing means faster prototyping, unbounded creativity, reduced carbon footprint, and a world where people have greater accessibility to the products they need. At our booth, we will showcase hardware innovations that reflect this vision. Imagine a portable 3D printer that is the size of toaster. Or imagine a 3D printer that can fabricate edible and delectable frosted treats. You are likely to see these innovations and more at Seattle Mini Maker Faire 2012.   

WOOF has several exciting projects coming up in the near-term. They will be demonstrating the impact that 3D printing will have  environmental sustainability by entering the Seafair Milk Carton Derby this July.  WOOF will fabricate a 3D printer that is capable of “printing out” a full-sized boat using recycled HDPE plastic from milk jugs.

WOOF is brainstorming ways to utilize 3D printing technology to improve sustainability and reduce poverty in underdeveloped countries. To learn more, please visit WOOF on Facebook at www.facebook.com/UWFabbers.

Screwless Heart Gears by Emmett Lalish

In addition to the UW WOOF booth at Seattle Mini Maker Faire, you will also find 3D printers at the booths of Vulcan 3D Printing and Metrix Create: Space!

Do you want to try printing something on a 3D printer without investing in your own RepRap or MakerBot?  Then head over to Metrix Create: Space any day between noon and midnight!

Saturday June 2, 2012

Sunday June 3, 2012

Rob Flickenger and his Tesla Gun

Designing a booth for Maker Faire may seem like an intimidating project. Festivals like these attract a broad demographic, a lot of questions, and all sorts of people with different interests and objectives. Combine it with the fact that visitors hardly ever linger at an exhibit longer than 8 minutes, and it may feel downright impossible.

But don’t fret! You are a Maker! You CAN make a fun, interactive exhibit!

Whether you’re a multimedia artist, a laboratory scientist, a basement tinkerer, or a vendor, every made object can have an interactive element. It may not seem apparent right away, but no matter how complex, all ideas are a built on simple foundations.

Design Take-Home Projects from Complex Ideas

Imagining just how a visitor could take home a piece of your display can be difficult. Especially if your project is a long process. Or requires special tools. Or an attention span.  Here are some ideas to help you do it with a little creativity.

Protein Chains with beads and pipe-cleaners

Protein Chains with beads and pipecleaners

I wanted to convey how a cell makes its proteins to 4th grade girls at Bailey-Gatzert Elementary. Obviously, I couldn’t bring them to my lab, or have them visualize something. And certainly they wouldn’t sit still for a lecture. Instead, I adapted a beading activity to simulate the biological process in similar ways. At my booth, girls worked to thread and fold “pipe-cleaner proteins” using the letters in their names as a recipe.

It was an adaptable project that was personable, quick, and had multiple points for entry. The girls had a blast! They built a pipe-cleaner protein for me that I still own.

Give kids a printout to take home.

Workshop: build 3D molecules and take home the printout

Another great example I’ve seen is a virtual chemistry activity in Scotland during Edinburgh’s 2011 Science Festival.

Unable to bring visitors directly into their organic lab, they simulated building a molecule.

At their station, kids could digitally built a 3D ball-and-stick molecule, print it, and then view it through 3D glasses. Very cool!

I printed a sodium acetate for myself.

Perfect Science vs. Imperfect Science

This is a cut-away view of a conveyer belt displayed in CosmoCaixa in Barcelona, Spain. I saw four excited ten-year-olds watch this thing for 20 minutes. There’s a reason why most science center elevators and escalators are see-through: people like to see how things work.

All too often, society honors our finished projects: proven mechanics, completed artworks, definite histories. As much as we could wish it–in the heat of a frustrating project–to just BE, a made project never merely appears. Bring your unfinished stuff! Bring the broken things! Celebrate Making in all its glory–including the “almosts” and the “crap.”

Tools and Materials

Board Game made from recycled materials

Maker Faire isn’t only about creations: it’s about tools, too. Another way you can allow people to tinker and play with your creation is to allow them the same opportunity you have. Let them work with your materials! Let them try with the same tools! You can share practical insights about your craft while marveling at the creations your own public will create. Trust me: they’ll surprise you…

This is an installment at CosmoCaixa in the same exhibit about Recycling, which went into great, dynamic detail about how we can reuse our materials. In a small corner of the exhibit, I found this: a boardgame made out of recycled materials, made by a visitor. My friend and I both agreed: we definitely would have played it.

Let’s not forget the little ones…

Maker Faires are for everyone–including families. And often where there are families, there are small children. And when one has small children, they usually also have SMALLER children. Don’t forget that children (elementary and younger) are Makers, too. Everyone starts from somewhere. You might as well give them the chance.

Wood blocks simulate Civil Engeering

This is a series of pictures from an “I Love Hamburg” exhibition I saw in 2010 in Gothenburg, Sweden. It toured on a train, and had several cars, and in one car, it asked people to “Envision a City of the Future.” It gave everyone blocks to write their hopes and designs for a new city on (“More bikes, less cars”; “Gardens on the Roofs!; “Soda Water Fountains!”), and asked them to ‘create’ and ‘stack’ buildings from their dreams.
Though it was for all ages–what a marvelous way to engage children with basic civil engineering!

If you’re not sure about how you’re going to create a booth for Maker Faire, don’t fret. There are many possibilities out there. And if you’re local, you know your community best. You’ll see. By the time you’re done, you’ll find the next best thing being a Maker, is teaching others how they can be Makers, too.

Part 1: Meet the team and General Booth Design

Key points: A few signs will help attendees understand your project, but don’t let the signs form a barrier between you and the public. Open shelving gives you more vertical space to display parts, projects, tools and components. Practice setting up your exhibit at home and test your hands-on activities with friends and kids.

Part 2: Examples of interactive exhibits

Key points: Let people see and touch.  Show some interesting raw materials, show what things look like in-process, half-way done, and parts that broke during your design trials. Let the public experience the process of making with all of their senses!  Great hands-on activities are ones that simplify the process to their essential components or symbolize complex things with simple analogs, for example make strings of beads as an analog for protein chains.

Part 3: Hacker Space booths and group exhibits

Exhibit what a group of geeks can accomplish with a little sharing of ideas, tools, and space.

Thank you to Steven Bradford, videographer,  from the Seattle Film Institute.

-Christin Boyd, Producer, Seattle Mini Maker Faire

What qualifies me to run this shindig?  I earned a degree from the University of Washington in Computer Engineering in 1997.  I worked for 11 years at Microsoft where I planned and presented at dozens of events.  I help plan the annual Seattle Art Car Blowout at the Fremont Fair.  I’ve done hundreds of hours of volunteer work for the Seattle Aquarium, where I incorporated hands-on learning with fun and science at the popular Touch Tanks and plankton microscopes.  As a mentor for a FIRST Robotics team, I helped Franklin High School students design and safely build their own robot in a workshop full of bandsaws, drills, and laser cutters.  On the artistic side, I occasionally draw, paint, and sew.

Now I’m leading a team of enthusiastic volunteers to bring Maker Faire to Seattle.  If you’d like to help make Seattle Mini Maker Faire happen, please contact us about opportunities to volunteer, sponsor the event, or apply to exhibit your project in a Maker booth.

Cheers,

Christin Boyd, Executive Producer, Seattle Mini Maker Faire